I'm somewhat on the fence on this issue.  While I personally would try to
avoid accessioning prints made in or for the museum from its accessioned
negatives, I wouldn't necessarily rule it out entirely.  If a decision is
made to accession new museum-made prints routinely, I would hope that it
could be done in a manner that wouldn't create a lot of extra work, e.g.,
perhaps one accession for each year's output of new prints, rather than a
separate transaction for each print or group of prints: depending on the
volume, this could be a registrarial and cataloging nightmare.  I've seen
situations in which the creation of museum-made direct prints and copy prints
was the driving force for item-level cataloging, and confusion about exactly
what was being cataloged ensued.

The important thing, from both administrative and "museum values"
standpoints, is to keep both provenance and generation straight and clear for
both staff and patrons--depending on use.  If you routinely make viewing,
service, and reproduction prints directly from the original negative, I'd
think that accessioning the print your patrons view in lieu of the negative
could introduce a potential for confusion.  Viewers need to know whether a
print is an "original" or "vintage" artifact vs. a museum-made direct print
from the original negative, vs. a "copy" print made from either a scan or an
intermediate copy negative.  A policy of not accessioning museum-made prints,
whether made directly from an original negative or from a scan or copy
negative, helps make the distinction clear.  On the other hand, we have
museum-made prints which are 100 or more years old that now have added value
as "artifacts" and may be difficult to justify not accessioning and
cataloging.

Sometimes a high-quality print made by the museum for exhibition purposes
should be accessioned into the collection precisely because it was displayed
alongside "original," accessioned works and represents an investment that you
want to protect, even if it isn't, strictly speaking,
irreplaceable--regardless of your normal policy.  As long as your records
clarify its provenance and circumstance of production, there will be no
confusion.  I once made new enlargements from original negatives for an
exhibition, which also contained a combination of 1930s "vintage" prints by
the photographer, plus later prints that he had had made commercially.  I
made some of the enlargements because we had negatives without corresponding
collection prints, and in other cases we had prints but my designer wanted
some size variation, so I made new prints to keep him happy.  If my prints
remain in the collection, I think they should be accessioned--but we won't
accession either routine copy prints or standard-sized (8" x 10") service
prints needed to view images for which we have original negatives only
without corresponding "vintage" prints.

So that's a long-winded way of saying "it depends".

David Haberstich

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